page_title: Clann Ruaidhrí
section_title: Dubhghall mac Ruaidhrí, and Ailéan mac Ruaidhrí
hierarchical_section_title: Clann Ruaidhrí / Kingdom of the Isles / Dubhghall mac Ruaidhrí, and Ailéan mac Ruaidhrí
caption_attribution_description: English: The name of Eiríkr Duggálsson (died 1287) as it appears on folio 122r of AM 45 fol (Codex Frisianus): "Eirikr Dvggalsson".
context_page_description: Clann Ruaidhrí was a leading medieval clan in the Hebrides and the western seaboard of Scotland. The eponymous ancestor of the family was Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill, a principal member of Clann Somhairle in the thirteenth century. Members of Clann Ruaidhrí were factors in both the histories of the Kingdom of the Isles and the Kingdom of Scotland in the thirteenth- and fourteenth centuries. The family appears to have held power in Kintyre in the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century, the family controlled an extensive provincial lordship stretching along north-western Scottish coast and into the Hebrides. As a leading force in the Kingdom of the Isles, the family fiercely opposed Scottish authority. With the collapse of Norwegian hegemony in the region, the family nimbly integrated itself into the Kingdom of Scotland.
  Members of Clann Ruaidhrí distinguished themselves in the First War of Scottish Independence, opposing adherents of both the English and Scottish Crowns. Like other branches of Clann Somhairle, Clann Ruaidhrí was a noted exporter of gallowglass warriors into Ireland. The mid fourteenth century saw the diminishment of the family in both Scotland and Ireland.
context_section_description: There is reason to suspect that Ruaidhrí is identical to the Clann Somhairle dynast, named in surviving sources only as Mac Somhairle, who was killed whilst resisting an English invasion of Tír Chonaill in 1247. Immediately after this event, Clann Ruaidhrí was certainly represented by Ruaidhrí's son, Dubhghall. Under the later, the kindred certainly involved itself against the English in Ireland. In 1258, Dubhghall is recorded to have clashed with and killed Jordan d'Exeter, the English Sheriff of Connacht. The following year, Aodh na nGall Ó Conchobhair, son of the Uí Conchobhair King of Connacht, is recorded to have married a daughter of Dubhghall, and to have received a tocher of one hundred and sixty gallowglass warriors commanded by Dubhghall's younger brother, Ailéan. Ailéan is, therefore, one of the earliest known warriors of this type. Along with Dubhghall's naval operations of the previous year, the marital alliance between the Uí Conchobhair and Clann Ruaidhrí appears to have formed part of a carefully coordinated plan to tackle English power in the north west of Ireland. Nevertheless, Aodh na nGall and his allies were utterly crushed in battle in 1260, a conflict in which the Clann Ruaidhrí gallowglasses may well have fought.
  The year after Mac Somhairle's death in 1247, Dubhghall and the chief of Clann Dubhghaill, Eóghan Mac Dubhghaill, both travelled to Norway seeking the kingship of the northern Suðreyjar from Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway. Although the entirety of the Suðreyjar roughly encompassed the Hebrides and Mann, the precise jurisdiction which Dubhghall and Eóghan competed for is uncertain. For example, the northern Hebridean islands of Lewis and Harris and Skye appear to have been held by the Crovan dynasty, then represented by the reigning Haraldr Óláfsson, King of the Isles. Whatever the case, it is possible that the events of 1247 and 1248 were related, and that Dubhghall and Eóghan sought to succeed Mac Somhairle's position in the Isles.
  It was only after the unexpected death of Haraldr in 1248 that Hákon sent Eóghan west over sea to temporarily take up the kingship of the Isles on his behalf. Eóghan, however, was not only a Norwegian dependant in the Isles, but an eminent Scottish magnate on the mainland. Although the Scottish Crown appears to have attempted to purchase the Isles earlier that decade, Eóghan's acceptance of Hákon's commission led Alexander II to unleash an invasion of Argyll in the summer of 1249, directed at the very heart of the Clann Dubhghaill lordship. The unfolding crisis only ended with the Scottish king's untimely death in July 1249. Eóghan appears to have been utterly dispossessed by the Scots a result of their invasion. In fact, his apparent displacement could well have upended the hierarchy of Clann Somhairle. For instance, within the very year that Eóghan was forced from Argyll by the Scots, Dubhghall is recorded to have "took kingship" in the Isles. This record could reveal that Dubhghall assumed the kingship from a severely weakened Eóghan.
  With the death of Alexander II in 1249, the Scottish invasion of the Argyll and the Isles came to an abrupt end. About a decade later, the latter's son and royal successor, Alexander III, came of age and took steps to continue his father's westward expansion. In 1261, the Scottish Crown sent envoys to Norway offering to purchase the Hebrides from Hákon. Once the Norwegians rejected the offer, the Scots are recorded to have lashed out against the Islesmen in a particularly savage assault upon the inhabitants of Skye. Thus provoked, Hákon assembled an enormous fleet to reassert Norwegian sovereignty along the north and western coast of Scotland. In July 1263, this armada disembarked from Norway, and by mid August, Hákon reaffirmed his overlordship in Shetland and Orkney, forced the submission of Caithness, and arrived in the Hebrides.
  Both Dubhghall and Ailéan are recorded to have played a significant part in Hákon's campaign against the Scots. Although a near contemporary Scandinavian source declares that the operation was an
caption: The name of Dubhghall's son, Eiríkr, as it appears on folio 122r of AM 45 fol (Codex Frisianus): "Eirikr Dvggalsson".[95] With the demise of the independent Kingdom of the Isles in 1266, Eiríkr remained a Norwegian subject.[96]
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